1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an installation system, and a method of installation.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to cause a printer to print data on a personal computer (PC), there is a necessity to install a printer driver that performs conversion into a page description language (PDL) corresponding to the printer (such as Printer Control Language (PCL), PostScript, or Portable Document Format (PDF)). With a printer icon (a logical printer) indicating a printer controlled by the printer driver, print setting information at the time of printing of the printer can be associated, and the print settings can be used at the time of printing by the printer. In Windows (registered trademark), from a property screen displayed by an operation on the printer icon, the print settings of the printer driver associated with the printer icon can be edited, for example.
When printing is executed using a printer driver with a PDL that does not correspond to the printer, the printer cannot recognize print data, causing a print error. In normal cases, when a printer is purchased, a printer driver that performs conversion into a PDL corresponding to the printer is included in a recording medium (such as a compact disc read only memory (CD-ROM)), and a print error caused by a mismatch between the PDL corresponding to the printer and the PDL of the printer driver does not occur. In contrast, when a user installs a printer driver distributed from a Web server, there is a necessity to select and download a printer driver with a PDL corresponding to the printer.
The printer may support a plurality of PDLs. In this case, the user can select a printer driver with any PDL out of the supported PDLs and install the printer driver. However, available functions for printing may differ for each printer driver that performs conversion into each PDL. The available functions for printing supported by the printer driver often depend on the type of the printer or the PDL. For this reason, focusing attention on the transfer (carry-over) of print settings, a printer driver that performs conversion into a different PDL is highly likely not to be able to be installed with the print settings transferred (carried over). In contrast, a printer driver that performs conversion into the same PDL is highly likely to be able to be installed with the print settings transferred. In the case of Windows, for example, when a new printer replaces an old printer, the user normally deletes a printer icon of the old printer to delete a printer driver of the old printer and then installs a new printer driver. In this case, print setting information of the printer driver of the old printer is discarded. However, in order to avoid this situation, Windows includes a function that enables the new printer driver to be selected or installed with the print settings of the printer driver associated with the printer icon transferred by an operation by the user.
Although the foregoing describes manually selecting and installing the new printer driver, a system is developed that acquires a printer driver based on system information of a client and inherent information of a printing apparatus and transmits the printer driver together with installation information to the client, thereby enabling a printer driver optimum for an environment of the client to automatically be installed (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-086969).
However, although the system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-086969 enables the client to install the optimum printer driver when replacing a printer, the system has a problem in that print settings of an existing printer driver cannot appropriately be transferred.